Excel conversion, weblogic8.1

Question

We are developing a web application using Weblogic 8.1 express as the application
server. Where in we need to convert the reports data into excel format and show
it in the browser. The approach we followed is as follows. We are creating the
excel file physically on the server and the same excel file is opened in the browser
using VBScript. This is feasible only when the excel file created with in the
scope of context. Since the application is deployed as a “.war” file, we cannot
create the excel file within the scope of context i.e within “.war”. So we are
creating the excel file in a local directory on the server. Since this is outside
of the context, we are unable to open the excel file in the browser.
Anybody have any idea on this?????

Answer 1

Hi,
You can use the virtual directory mapping feature to direct WebLogic server to
look for static resources in a directory external to the web application context.
For example, if you are writing those excel files to c:\temp\docroot\sheets then
you can define the following in your web application's weblogic.xml file
<virtual-directory-mapping>
          <local-path>c:/temp/docroot</local-path>
          <url-pattern>/sheets/*</url-pattern>
</virtual-directory-mapping>
This will define c:/temp/docroot as the virtual document root for your web application
and when a resource is requested as http://localhost/mywebapp/sheets/expenses.xsl
, then weblogic server would look for the file under c:/temp/docroot/sheets. Your
actual document root under
the application context would still be used, the virtual directory would not replace
it, but resources are first searched under the virtual directory then
the application document root.
For more info about virtual directory mapping, type "virtual directory mapping"
in the AskBEA tool and you will get all the documents/newsgroup discussions related
to the subject.
Another option would be to return the sheet as a binary stream from the servlet/jsp
that is generating it. If the library you are using to generate the sheet allows
you to obtain a stream of the created sheet (rather than writing it to the file
system), then you can return the stream contents from your servlet/jsp.
Hope this will help.
Laith